GTX 480 vs. HD 5870, 8x AA Performance Analysis, Part 3

DiRT 2 Demo – (DX9c)

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is a racing game that was released in September 2009, and is the sequel to Colin McRae: Dirt. It includes many new race-events, including stadium events as your RV travels from one event to another in many real-world environments across four continents. Dirt 2 includes five different event types even allowing you to compete at new locations. It also includes a new multiplayer mode. Dirt 2 is powered by an updated version of the EGO engine which was featured in Race Driver: Grid. This updated EGO engine also features an updated physics engine.

We have been using the Dirt 2 demo to benchmark up until now as it works just as well as in the retail game – until you try to run DX11 on a NVIDIA DX11 card, in which case it reverts back to DX9c. Evidently the developer did not provide support for NVIDIA’s new DX11 card in the demo although the retail game has no such issues. Since we ran all of our tests with the Dirt 2 demo in Part One, it was too late to switch to the full game for this Part 2. We instead edited the configuration file so that the HD 5870 also ran on the DX9 pathway so that we could have a solid apples-to-apples comparison of performance across all of the cards. Later on, in further testing, will use the full retail game for the DX11 pathway as the visuals are better.

First we test our two video cards at 2560×1600:

The GTX 480 pulls ahead of the HD 5870 in a not so tight race when they are set at 4xAA and the GTX improves its lead when they are set to run with 8xAA. What about 1920×1200?

Again the GTX 480 leads and pulls even further ahead of the HD 5870 when they are both at 8xAA. So let’s look at the 1680×1050 results:

Dirt 2 gets the checkered flag with the GTX 480 on the DX9c pathway, especially as it is pushed to its 8xAA red line. We look forward to bringing you DX11 results in subsequent testing.